HarryTri

Thanks for the replies.

I did it! I bought a Lenovo G500 laptop with Windows 8 (I still have my old Pentium 3 desktop though). Well, the start screen isn't so horrible but I too prefer the desktop - with a bit of a start menu with access to the various programs. I retrieved the serial number with Read and Write Everything as it was proposed in one topic here. Yet I wonder if there is a way to see the normal BIOS messages when the computer starts instead of the Lenovo logo. I looked into the BIOS but didn't find anything relevant - or it has to do with the "secure boot"?

Don't hope for help from me, I don't even have Windows 7, but if you gave some more details about GFWL and this service (full name, what they are and what they do) maybe somebody could help.

If I was Microsoft I would release a paid Service Pack 4 for Windows XP with new features to make it comparable to the newer Windows OS's (I don't mean the user interface, hands down from it) and simply continue supporting Windows XP SP4.

I ran Windows Update (in fact Microsoft Update) today and it found 4 critical and 6 optional updates in less than 5 minutes! The last time it took more than an hour. Did Microsoft do something about this problem? Or it is just that there wasn't any updates for Internet Explorer 8? I have also uninstalled Advanced SystemCare, since the last time (and installed CCleaner in its place), but I doubt that this improvement has anything to do with it.

I don't know to answer that question, yet it's good that you solved the problem.

I have the latest updates and no problem. Who says it was kmixer.sys? Do you still have the problem?

Maybe you should try with another router to find where the problem is - in your system or in the router.

"WBEM" is the WMI folder and "config" is the registry and event system folder, you may be able to disable writing in the .evt files by setting their size to 0 KB from the Computer Managment console but you won't have the possible errors logged in case that something goes wrong. As for the processes I wouldn't mess with these ones if I were you, try disabling services from the Computer Managment console instead.

You mean BSODs (sys files as far as I know usually cause this kind of problems)? How do you know that it is kmixer.sys?

This is a rather painfull experience I had trying to update my sister's laptop (AMD Turion X2, Windows XP SP3 recently installed). I firstly tried without IE8 - she didn't want it. Windows Update seemed to be working in terms of CPU usage and disc access but after 18,5 hours! I quited. I installed IE8, I tried again and after 2 hours I quited again. I downloaded and installed - with problems, I had to extract with 7-zip and copy the wuweb.dll file manually - the latest Windows Update Agent. This time Windows Update worked untill the detection of the available updates. I clicked on "Install updates" and it couldn't download the files - I tried thee times. I thought that something strange is going on. The only unfamilliar thing was Mobogenie - software for Android phones. I uninstalled Mobogenie and everything worked without problems. Maybe this program should be detected and treated as a virus?

The only thing that I can think of is an AV interference. Try temporarily disabling your AV program and see if you still have the problem.

What about uninstalling/reinstalling .NET Framework 4?

Myself never had any problem with Windows Updates (I have an OEM version of Windows XP SP2 though - which I patch with SP3 and IE8 before updating, I don't know if it can make any difference). The only problem is that when I select "Custom" instead of "Critical" update the Windows Update Agent finds the critical updates and then - as I discovered by checking the related logs - it does all the job from the begining to find the critical updates - again - and the optional ones! That of course even doubles the required time. Does anyone know why it happens and if it can be avoided?

Aren't these three updates contained in SP3?

I'm not a Microsoft employee but the most probable explanation is that the guy that typed this didn't press the "5" key strongly enough and didn't notice it. Also cumulative is cumulative, the mentioned Microsoft KB articles say not to delete any timezone related registry keys, they don't say anything about old updates.

Perhaps it isn't so crazy. According to Doug Neal the problem has to do with WUA evaluating the superseedence of the patches for Internet Explorer, perhaps if the latest patch is already installed this somehow helps the situation.

I have the Automatic Updates turned on but I use Microsoft Update for downloading and installing every months updates. This time it took a bit long but it finally did the job (I mean detecting the updates and listing them, that's the difficult part, the rest is easy).

Are you sure that this is the right date? Anyway it seems that you have to reinstall .NET Framework 3.5.

When did you install .NET Framework 3.5? Is it still there (check if it is listed in the Add/Remove Programs tab)?

Perhaps the malicious software had already done its "job"... Also running Windows XP SP3 on a 1 GHz Pentium III with 256 MB RAM with no problems.

Windows XP don't have the TRIM command but there must be some software that can do it instead of Windows.

I reinstalled Windows XP on 18th of September, I had no problem with Windows Update.

The answer in both cases is yes. They are required individually by different programs each.

Sorry for the delayed response, I was out of the web for some days. Thanks for the information Tripedacus, I also don't think that it is something bad, it mostly looked weird to me. AVG also scans for rootkits, the whole thing seems to be benign anyway.